Tim Miller: “That was always Stage 1 of adapting it to what the real world is and what a real animal would be like.

It would be weird and it would feel like he was running around nude if he was some sort of otter-like thing. It was always, for us, fur, and we never considered anything different. It’s part of what integrates him into the real world and makes him a real creature.”

Producer Neal Moritz on design:

Neal Moritz: “We looked at every different variation of what shoes he’s worn and we’re trying to pay homage to that and also make it current and present day in what we think a Sonic of today would wear.”

However, the most challenging part of Sonic’s updated design is one that has yet to be revealed—his eyes. Since we often see Sonic with one eye, the filmmakers had trouble finding a way to bring it into a live-action movie, and apparently Sega wasn’t entirely happy with their decision according to Tim Miller:

Tim Miller: “I don’t think SEGA was entirely happy with the eye decision, but these sorts of things you go, ‘It’s going to look weird if we don’t do this.’ But everything is a discussion, and that’s kind of the goal, which is to only change what’s necessary and stay true to the rest of it. He’s not going to feel like a Pixar character would because I don’t think that’s the right aesthetic to make it feel like part of our world.”

As for how Sonic will represent the speed that Sonic the Hedgehog is known for, post-production has begun about a month ago and the special effects are still being finalized. Director Jeff Fowler, a resident Sonic superfan, said he knew from the start exactly how he wanted to visually represent Sonic’s super-fast abilities, and this was actually one of the original pitch to the studios:

Tim Miller: “The first thing you need to do is put limits on it. If you can do anything, nothing is special. For me, it’s always about keeping it grounded and keeping it realistic. We had some time to figure out the speed: What it looks like, what it feels like for a character to do that and how it relates to our world. It took a little trial and error, but that’s animation in figuring out what the effect looks like and what it does to the rest of the world around it. The speed changes over time because he evolves, because he can’t do everything at the beginning of the movie. It’s finding the visual language and figuring out how it’s going to evolve over time.”

While the speed was teased in the motion poster, producer Moritz says not to consider it an accurate depiction of how Sonic’s speed will be represented in the movie:

Neal Moritz: “Obviously the poster can only show so much. … That’s a hint at what we’re hoping to accomplish, but I think people are going to see things they’ve probably never seen before in trying to represent speed in this movie. We’ve worked so closely with the people at SEGA who are kind of the gatekeepers of Sonic to make sure we’re lockstep. We’re trying to make something that’s for today that fans of different versions will love as well.”